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by my calico
Summary: While he was trying to be her everything, she had needed no effort at all to be his. / Or, the story about the trellis.


_Two hundred thirty faces to my place,  
__Oh, I should not be alone  
__I'll burn this house down, no need for walls now  
__When I'm with you, I'm at home_

_**When I'm At Home by The Maine**_

* * *

There's a trellis under Jade's window, almost as old as the house itself and with just as many memories. It shows. Once white, it is gray now, and there are spots one could make out the oak-wood from which it was made. There are places eaten away by age and the rain. Earlier, maybe, Jade's mother had hoped it would be home to beautifully flowering vines, but she has neither the patience nor the skill for gardening, and after years of neglect, the only thing that grew on it is ivy.

Beck notices all of this after that first night.

It's almost midnight, two and a half years ago. A slight hesitation still hangs in the cool night air; a sort of tentativeness as they stand at Jade's doorstep and Beck gives her a quick kiss where they bump noses and pull away laughing. "Thanks," she tells him in a whisper. It's her first time coming home past her curfew, and though Jade insists that no one cares,she still refuses to wake anyone because she's never in the mood for a speech from her mother about it. She smiles up at him once more before she kisses him again, properly. As she pulls back, she fishes into her bag for something, but turns to him then as she mouths that she couldn't find her keys.

Too shy yet to offer that she sleep over, and yet already _too much in love with her_to leave her to deal with this herself, Beck searches for an answer. His brown eyes found the trellis in the dark, lit only by the streetlights and the faint glimmer of the moon. "Is that your room?" he asks as he points to the window above it.

She nods, knowing what he's suggesting before he says it aloud. "Are you _sure_we're climbing up there though?"

"Sure. I'll carry you."

She makes a face, the one she always makes when she thinks an idea is ridiculous, but she doesn't tell him why. "We'll climb it together," she says, giving him a compromise. "And if you're so worried about me falling off, I'll go up first." He thinks it's dangerous for her to do it, but he doesn't say so, because he knows that once her mind is made, she isn't going to change it. He gives her a boost up the trellis and watches her as she turns to him with a stern look on her face. "Close your eyes," she says, scowling.

His brow furrows. "Why?"

"Because I'm wearing a _skirt,_you idiot."

He's thankful that the darkness masks the deep red his face becomes, and shuts his eyes obediently. Jade can't see where she's going and grabs a hold of a worn piece of wood. Her breath hitches as she falters a little, but faster than she could react, Beck is already next to her, telling her it's okay. They talk quietly through the rest of the way up, when finally he reaches for her window and pushes it up. She clambers into her room and lets him in. She's a little breathless but she hugs him and thanks him for everything. She lets him out through the front door and they say their good nights once more.

The next time he climbs up that trellis is eight months later. It's the last night of the play she stars in, and she received a standing ovation from the audience. She's radiant, but hours after the show, she texts him an inexplicable _"Please come over,"_and he could do nothing but obey. It's almost two in the morning, so he climbs up her window to find her still in the dress she wore for her role, her beautiful blue eyes red-rimmed and teary. On her lap are cut-up petals from the flowers she received earlier that night. "Beck," she says, her voice giving way, and it breaks his heart to see her like this, so he rushes to her side and takes her in his arms as he asks her what happened.

She doesn't tell him, but he knows. _He_didn't come to see her, even if she begged him to. It's always _his fault,_and Beck swears that he would never be like him, that he would never be the reason that she cries. He wants to be everything she needs, strives to be that, even. He wants to make it so that she never has to feel unwanted again, even though he knows that he cannot fathom how deeply her scars run. He spends that night just holding her as she cries herself to sleep, and when the morning comes, he leaves as quietly as he arrived.

As time passes, he comes to her house less and less; she comes to his, instead. She tells him she doesn't like her house, but offers no further explanation. She doesn't have to; he knows. It's always quiet at her place, save for the screaming matches she has with her mother. It's full of empty rooms and quiet hallways: hollow. He knows she feels more at home in his RV than she does in her own house, which is why she's so familiar with everything she touches: the fish tank, the coffeemaker, the television set, the bed… and he lets her. He asks no questions when she shows up without warning at his RV, asking if he wants to watch Sweeney Todd with her again. He lets her leave a pair of scissors at his bedside table; he makes sure to sneak some of his mother's old fashion magazines into the space under his bed for her to cut up when she needs to. Everything he has is hers, too, and he does his best to let her know.

He tries his hardest to be her everything.

The last time he uses the trellis is almost a year later, after they have a fight. It's over a little thing he did and a little thing she didn't do, as always. He forgets what most of their fights are about, because he has faith that they'll never have one they can't talk through. This time it's difficult, though. It's one of those times she refuses to talk to him or answer his calls, and he doesn't know what to do with himself. He comes over to her house and rings the doorbell, but no one answers, so he figures she's alone. He climbs up the trellis and knocks on her window. He's lucky she doesn't push him off the second floor, she tells him when she finally opens it. He smiles at her, and the fight is resolved without words.

He doesn't know when it happens: when he stops trying to be that home she never had. But the fights escalate, and gradually, he stops trying to appease her. He's tired of being the one bending over backwards for her, tired of being yelled at, tired of everything. Not tired of her, though, _never_tired of her, he always tells himself. He swears he would never be like her father, that he would never leave her when she needed him most.

He's more like him than he knows.

He doesn't open the door one day, and she walks away from him. For months afterward, the RV is silent and empty, as if it's missing something without her there. He fills his days with the inane chatter of the Northridge girls who show up at his place to talk about nothing in particular. He throws himself into school and work and tries not to pay attention to the gaping _hole_that had formed in his life ever since she left it.

Beck drives past her house one day because it's on the way home from school, and there are workers taking down the trellis. He couldn't keep himself from stopping at the curb and asking them about it. "It's high time," says one of them, "Termites. It was only a matter of time before it broke completely." He thanks them and drives away, unsure why he mourns it. It's a pile of wood and patches of ivy on the Wests' front lawn now, all broken and useless and worn by the age and the weather. For some reason, it feels so much more final now that it's over. That it's _high time_they're over.

They've always been a little broken, and it was only a matter of time.

He pulls up at his house and enters his RV. It's too quiet, and he's alone with his fish tank and the scissors she left behind and the magazines under his bed. He runs his fingers over the handle and sighs. He doesn't know how or when it happened, but while he was trying to be her everything, she had needed no effort at all to be his.

**Author's Note: **So I was looking through the first chapter of Phone Call and decided to do a story about the trellis I mentioned there (yeah, I have a feeling my one-shots will keep spawning new one-shots and so on, tell me if it gets annoying). This was that attempt. Also, _huge _thanks to xXFireRoseXx who has so kindly offered to be my beta reader! She's doing a marvelous job and caught a whole bunch of stuff I didn't notice. Thanks, I love you!

**Disclaimer: **If Victorious and The Maine were mine, let's just say the world would be turning a little differently.


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